Making sense of life as we know it, in the light of evolution.

Friday coffee break

Every Friday at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! our contributors pass around links to new scientific results, or science-y news, or videos of adorable wildlife, that they’re most likely to bring up while waiting in line for a latte.

The setting is White Sands, NM – an island of gypsum dunes slowly transforming and shifting through the Chihuahuan Desert. The protagonists are three species of small white lizards inhabiting these dunes. The story is recent and rapid evolution: changing ecology, natural selection, and speciation. Our attempt, as field biologists, is to tell that story.

Noah points us to NASA’s satellite images of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska, which, like a lot of glaciers these days, is getting smaller.

In 1986, the glacier’s terminus was just a few kilometers north of Heather Island. By 2011, it had retreated more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the north, moving past Terentiev Lake and Great Nunatak Peak. As the glacier has retreated, it has also thinned substantially, as shown by the expansion of brown bedrock areas. Rings of freshly exposed rock, known as trimlines, are prominent in the later image. Since the 1980s, the glacier has lost about half of its total thickness and volume.

Devin suggests a recent editorial in Science on the need to connect people with graduate-level science expertise to high school science education.

At any one time, there are thousands of U.S. Graduate Students with strong Science expertise and an interest in education who would be more than qualified to stem the critical shortage of secondary chemistry, physics, earth sciences, and biology teachers, but who will most likely never set foot in a high-school (precollege) classroom.

Sarah points out that the BBC has a treasure trove of video on adaptations for defense against predators. (The one titled “snake in the grass” is especially great. —Jeremy)